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    The Architect of Eden
    The Architect of Eden
    The Architect of Eden
    Ebook141 pages2 hours

    The Architect of Eden

    By J. Scott Catron

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    About this ebook

    THERE IS A STORY BEHIND THE STORY OF GOD'S CREATION ACCOUNT IN GENESIS.

    You are about to go on an exciting journey through Eden's garden to discover the master plan God designed for mankind. As the original blueprint to humanity is unrolled, mysteries that have been hidden throughout the ages will be revealed. Through each day of creation, you will be guided on a behind-the-scenes tour that will help you better understand who God is, so you can better understand who you are.

    BE PREPARED TO SEE GOD IN WAYS YOU'VE NEVER SEEN HIM.
    BE PREPARED TO SEE YOURSELF IN WAYS YOU'VE NEVER SEEN YOURSELF.
    AND BE PREPARED TO BECOME SOMEONE YOU'VE NEVER YET BECOME.

    "However, as it is written; No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him --But God has revealed it to us by His Spirit." (I Cor. 2:910)

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherWestBow Press
    Release dateJan 12, 2012
    ISBN9781449736002
    The Architect of Eden
    Author

    J. Scott Catron

    J. Scott Catron is founder and senior pastor of Cornerstone Family Church. He has traveled to multiple nations, training and equipping pastors. His vision is to bring the Body of Christ into a realization of who they are as those made in the image of God. Scott lives with his wife, Suzie, and their daughter, Hannah, in Princeton, West Virginia.

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      Book preview

      The Architect of Eden - J. Scott Catron

      Chapter 1

      The Art of Seeing God

      It was 1992, and communism had just fallen in Russia. I was fortunate to be part of one of the first crusade teams to get into Russia to hold evangelistic services and help plant new churches. It was my first time out of the United States and in a culture where I had to adapt to a language barrier. Spending three weeks with our interpreter helped me to pick up on a few simple words though. I learned just enough to buy a Coke and thank the people who sold it to me. However, there was a big difference in memorizing a few common catchphrases and actually being able to sit down and have a comprehensible conversation with one of the wonderful people of Russia. Because I did not truly understand the language, I was often left bewildered at what in the world was going on around me.

      During my last sixteen years as a pastor, I have noticed that my situation in Russia clearly mirrors a problem we face in the body of Christ today. We have memorized a bunch of Christian catchphrases and may even be able to recite definitions for many of the common biblical terms. But does that equate to understanding the language of God? We struggle to read biblical passages in context, which is the main reason why there are so many different movements and denominations in Christianity today. When we fail to see God’s redundancy in patterns and systems, we grossly complicate the Bible. People are overwhelmed by trying to learn the thousands of different things they think God was trying to say in the Bible instead of simply hearing the few important points He was trying to make.

      King Solomon once stated in his great collection of Proverbs, For lack of vision [revelation], God’s people perish (Prov. 29:18 KJV). The context is clear. Because God’s people could not SEE what God needed for them to see, they could not be what He wanted them to be. It’s simple; your purpose and destiny in God will be completely limited to the degree that you understand what God is trying to tell you.

      Obviously there is a great deal of confusion in what various schools of thought believe they see in the Bible. We’re all over the place with our doctrines and what we think God is up to. The disparity and extremes between various denominations and movements is incredible, to say the least. Can everybody be right? Hmmm, could everybody be wrong? Maybe everyone has a piece of the truth—but which piece is the right piece?

      Well, I sure do not claim to have a lock on truth, but I absolutely understand where the breakdown in finding truth often takes place. It’s in the simple understanding that God is spirit. Because God is spirit, His words are—wait, it’s coming—spiritual! We, on the other hand, are not like God. We are carnal creatures with carnal minds. Carnal simply means natural, so our first response to God’s words is to try and naturalize them in a way that makes sense to the carnal mind. That’s why the apostle Paul said that we must have our minds made new. He went on to say, in Romans 12:2, that having this new mind would be the only way to know God’s plan for our lives.

      This language barrier between God and man is most clearly seen in the interaction between Jesus and … well, whoever He was talking to. Not only did He re-translate almost every single Scripture He quoted, but He also couldn’t seem to say anything without his followers going, Huh?

      Jesus would say things like, If a man wants to see the kingdom of God, he must be born again. Nicodemus, a really smart guy, could not understand what Jesus was saying. While his carnal mind was struggling to reason out the biological aspects of Jesus’ comment, he missed the whole point of what Jesus was trying to say. Ironically enough, Jesus was telling Nicodemus that unless he took on a new mind, he would never see (or understand) God’s plan.

      Jesus declared, Tear this temple down, and I’ll rebuild it in three days (John 2:19 KJV). Oh my goodness, what a stink that stirred up. The disciples could not see that Jesus was talking about His death and resurrection. The good news is that these very same disciples did begin to take on new minds, and they did begin to understand the language of God. Just weeks after that whole tear this temple down debacle, Peter was out in the middle of Main Street Jerusalem quoting the prophet Joel. He was quoting things about the sun being darkened, the moon turning to blood, and all kinds of crazy stuff. The context of this great passage from Joel was in reference to the baptism of the Holy Spirit that had just been poured out on the 120 as they tarried in the upper room, which is recorded in the book of Acts. Wow, I’m surprised that somebody didn’t think that the passage in Joel 2 was talking about nuclear holocaust. Wait a minute—they did. Several twentieth-century Christian novelists did just that, despite the fact that Peter already explained this as something spiritual.

      Jesus proved we don’t understand the language of God—not until our minds are renewed (and that process takes time, just like learning any language). But learning the language of God—to truly see what God is trying to show us—will require us to cast down imaginations and every high thing we’ve exalted above the knowledge of God (2 Cor. 10:5). These images we’ve erected with our carnal minds are blocking us from seeing what God really needs us to see. Without this vision to see what God is saying, our very purpose and birthright will perish.

      There is an art and a spiritual science, if you will, to understanding what God has been trying to say to us from the beginning. It is true that the Bible declares that this message from God has been hid from the carnally wise. However, Paul declares emphatically in 1 Corinthians 2:9–10, No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him. But God has revealed it to us by His Spirit. The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. God wants you to see some stuff.

      We should cry out in agreement with the apostle Paul as he prayed, That the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which He has called you, the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints … (Eph. 1:18). It is a prayer that should be answered in you and me right here, right now. It is not for me to see someday in the sweet by and by; I need to see it now. It is not when we all get to heaven that we will need to understand the Kingdom of God; it is right here, right now. We need to understand the language of God today. We can open up the Bible and clearly see what His Spirit is trying to say to us. My reward may very well be down the road in an age to come, but my purpose and reason for being are now.

      Our Father wrote us a letter. This letter contains everything we might ever need to know about how to live life to its fullest, to walk with Him in true relationship, and in the process, to rule and reign in the earth like kings. But if we can’t decipher the language of God, we will not only mistranslate His Word into the fodder of religion, but we will also complicate it to the point of making sure that even those who follow such a religion can’t agree on its precepts.

      God is spirit; His words are spiritual. I pray that as you continue to read, His Spirit will help you to learn his language so you can learn how He does things. His ways are not our ways, but that does not mean you can’t learn those ways—if you know what He’s saying.

      Chapter 2

      The Unrolling of the Blueprint

      Repetition of familiar imagery is one of the primary keys God uses in the Bible to help us see what He’s talking about. God takes things we have learned to relate to over generations of cultural existence and uses them to represent what He wants and to show us how He operates. Using these types, patterns, shadows, symbols, and allegorical pictures helps us to translate the language of God.

      Some common examples include the redundant usage of words like family, sons, or bride to describe who we are to God. Repetition translates into an understanding of intimacy that God wants with us. The repetitive imagery of things like gold and fire helps us to see the process that God is using to turn us into something valuable and beautiful. The redundant use of certain numbers in Scripture, within context, begins to speak of the work of God in ways that become very clear to the reader.

      God uses this same pattern of speaking to help us relate to who He is. Our human experience helps us relate to God when He refers to Himself as a father, a brother, or a friend. When God speaks of Himself with such specific terminology, we understand that our whole connection with Him will depend on our understanding of each descriptive term.

      When Jesus, God in flesh, came to the earth, it is not an insignificant detail that His profession was as a carpenter. There is little doubt that Jesus would have culturally followed in His earthly father’s footsteps to carry out the family vocation. It was a skill set that not only lent to working with wood but also with stones. From this place of experience, Jesus would speak about building your house properly on the rock so it could withstand storms. From that understanding of who Jesus was, Peter would later refer to Him as being the chief cornerstone and talk about how He was carving us as living stones and fitting us together as a house. God, through the expression of His Son, Jesus, found identity in the earth as a builder. This description is a key to our understanding of

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